Re: Contribution to Octave as a PM

[fgnievinski]

Nice to see more fellow non-coder contributors.

A little while ago I started a Marketing & Community section in the wiki
Projects page:
<http://wiki.octave.org/Projects#Marketing_and_Community>
It has links to the exemplary Apache OpenOffice Marketing team.
May I single out this existing task: "Help design a user or a developer
survey".  It'd be a first step towards a market research for Octave.

As you, I was first exposed to Matlab in college -- fact which MathWorks
knows very well, given that they have a road show delivering presentations
at the main U.S. universities at least once a year -- so I've just added
this item: "Help prepare and deliver presentations about Octave at colleges
and universities."

Let me illustrate two usage cases where your project management skills could
serve Octave well.  Every now and then someone joins the list and offers to
help and asks for guidance on where to start.  As of now, we point them to
the wiki Project Ideas, <http://wiki.octave.org/Category:Project_Ideas>. 
But it's a bit dry -- it could be made more attractive.  Besides, I suspect
it only list stalled projects -- it doesn't include ongoing projects, things
like classdef and the gui which are both under active development and could
showcase how healthy and strong the Octave development is.  

Another example is that Octave accepts for donations although I think it
could leverage more income if it offered reverse bounties, i.e., the option
to pay (partially) for missing features. These would be cost estimates
offered by developers-for-hire, against which users could pledge to pay for. 
>From the user's viewpoint, it'd be a more tangible return on investment,
compared to open-ended donations.  This site seems well tailored for the
purpose: <https://www.catincan.com/>. 

Off course, this is just my biased opinion.
-F.



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